


Somewhere in the Middle

by orphan_account



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Character Study, Gen, POV First Person, Vampire Sam, Vampires, Werewolves, werewolf tucker
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 03:16:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6356731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After all, if ghosts weren’t real, then why should it be that anything like vampires or werewolves or faeries or unicorns or dragons would exist either?<br/>As I discovered at fourteen years of age, I was very, very wrong.<br/>Ghosts were real. I found that out when I became one myself. I didn’t die, per se, I just got fused with an incredible amount of energy and ectoplasm, somehow making me both a living, breathing dead person and also considerably less human than I had been before.<br/>-----<br/>(Or: Danny's life is suddenly a balancing act.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Somewhere in the Middle

Years ago nobody would have given a second thought to the idea that a vampire and a werewolf could even stand to be in the same room with each other without biting at the other’s throat- literally.

Sam’s a vampire. She doesn’t eat meat and instead drinks a sort of fake blood mix, I guess? I don’t really understand it. A vegetarian vampire is not something I would ever thought I’d meet, much less be best friends with. However, aside from the whole vegan thing, Sam does a pretty good job of capturing the whole ‘Essence of Vampire’ thing. She wears mostly black and even has weirdly purple eyes, too. But I can’t say anything about that, since my eyes are even weirder. I mean, who has white pupils? But I digress. Sam’s really passionate, and a rebel too. She wears black all the time because her parents went a little over the top with the whole ‘blend in with the humans’ thing. They’re like, perpetual 1950’s stereotypes. Sam can’t stand that so, ironically, she became a stereotypical vampire. Except for the vegan thing.

And if Sam is the most blatant example of a vampire you’ll ever meet- so over the top that you think she can’t possibly be an actual vampire- then Tucker is the most unsuspecting werewolf you’ll ever come across. He comes from a long line of werewolves, all the way into like, medieval times, I think. Despite that, he’s always on top of the latest technology and loves everything nerdy. He’s got more videogame posters than I have spacecraft models, and that’s saying something. Videogames have always been what ties us together. That, and our unbridled passion for greasy, cheap fast food. Mostly I just like it because it’s not infused with experimental anti-ghost drugs, but for Tucker it’s all about the meat. The one werewolf stereotype he meets is his carnivorous nature- and by that I mean he eats almost nothing except meat. Sometimes this has caused a little bit of tension between him and Sam.

And that’s where I come in.

See, up until about a year ago, I was the only one considered ‘normal’ out of our little friend group, though I thought I was the weird one. For all intents and purposes, Sam and Tucker lived happy lives with happy families (well, in Sam’s case, not necessarily happy, but she had the whole teenage rebellion thing down to a T). Me, on the other hand? My family is what you’d call dysfunctional. My parents are brilliant scientists and probably among the smartest people in the world, but instead of choosing a ‘respectable’ field like astronomy or psychology, they chose to be…ghost hunters. Yep. That’s right. Like Ghostbusters, but with less action and more science. For more than two decades, all their research was based off a tiny bit of data gleaned from an accident in college, and in all their combined years they’d never even seen a ghost. What with all their research in the basement and whatnot, they were, understandably, somewhat absentminded and distant parents. Thus, both my sister and I became understandably disenchanted with our parents’ all-consuming profession by the ripe old age of about ten. However, Sam and Tucker were never that disinterested. To me, the lab was some cluttered old space, filled with beakers and papers and creepy mad-scientist inventions and other stuff I didn’t care too much about, which I only entered briefly every so often to remind my parents to get some sleep, or to ask if Mom was making dinner or if I should just order pizza instead. Looking back on it now, I can definitely understand why my two best friends were so interested in what lay below the Fenton household. To them, the basement was a portal to another part of their world, filled with infinite possibilities and what-ifs I never even dreamed of. After all, if ghosts weren’t real, then why should it be that anything like vampires or werewolves or faeries or unicorns or dragons would exist either?

As I discovered at fourteen years of age, I was very, very wrong.

Ghosts were real. I found that out when I became one myself. I didn’t die, per se, I just got fused with an incredible amount of energy and ectoplasm, somehow making me both a living, breathing dead person and also considerably less human than I had been before.  
Suddenly I found myself a part of a world I didn’t even know existed up until that point. There was an entire universe beneath and around me that I’d somehow remained oblivious to for most of my life. I’m very sure that had I not woken up after The Accident to a large, distressed brown wolf in a beret licking my face and Sam off to the side with large, bat-like wings flaring from her back and sharp fangs poking out of her mouth, I wouldn’t have been able to get over the whole half-ghost thing. I would have gone on thinking I was crazy, but here were my own two best friends, who were suddenly, inexplicably like me but also not, and if nothing else that extra bit of weirdness somehow solidified our friendship even further. I guess it could have been that I’d just gone through a life-threatening experience, too. So that was us. Just a weird little trio, initially comprised of a werewolf, a vampire, and their mutual human friend, but now made up of a werewolf, a vampire, and a half-ghost who acted as mediator and tied us all together.

See? I do so have a good vocabulary. Take that, Lancer.

So, yeah. In one terrible-slash-awesome afternoon I went from the only human of the group to one of but two of a very rare ‘species’, and to the link between two worlds and beyond. And honestly? I was really scared. Thank god for my friends. If they weren’t there for me, well, I know what I would have ended up like now, thanks to Vlad. He’s what happens when you let the scales tip too far one way or the other. When you’re like us, you can’t just ignore one half of yourself. If you pretend you’re just a normal human and try to force your ghost half away, you begin to forget everything that was ever important to you. Ghosts are, for better or for worse, tied to their emotions and memories so much so that they’re what keep us going. At the same time, if you favor your ghost side too much, you let your humanity crumble away until you’re nothing more than pure anger and hatred. Either way, you lose. It’s always a balancing act, one that threatens our very existence. Sometimes, I don’t know what world I’m meant to be a part of. Thankfully though, Sam and Tucker are like mirrored halves of me. 

I like to think that one of them is like my human half, and the other represents the ghost part of me. Who's who I couldn't say, though. They coexist. And just like me, they can’t pretend they’re human. Seeing them helps me understand who and what I am, more so than they could if they were regular old humans. They’re my anchors. They’re the reason why I’m okay with it if I’m a little more ghostly when I’m in human form, why I’m actually glad traits from each side of me bleed through into the other. It reaffirms what I knew from the very beginning: I’m not one or the other. I’m both. I’m Libra, I’m yin and I’m yang. I’m the gray area in between. I’m a ghost and I’m a human. I’m a halfa. I am both.

**Author's Note:**

> Hopefully I'm gonna add more to this! I have a lot of feelings for this AU, like, my god I LOVE the idea of a weird supernatural trio. Send me your headcanons- I'd love to add more!


End file.
